Help Jessi Get Top Surgery!

Hi! My name is Jessi (they/them). I’m a loudly queer, proudly fat non-binary person living in Columbus, OH and I need your help to cut my tits off (getting top surgery).

I grew up in a small, rural town in Ohio, and my childhood was one big “you know you’re a baby queer when…” anecdote. Whether it was refusing to wear a dress in my aunt’s wedding so much that they bought me pants instead, or spending my summers out at a pond catching frogs with my bare hands, or sneaking into the bathroom at school to change out of my training bras as soon as I got there... and as I got older, I just grew up and into my queerness even more. I cut my hair off. I started binding sometimes, although binding is not super accessible to me as a fat, large-chested person. I let folks know that my pronouns are they/them. But I thought that me and my boobs were going to spend the rest of my life together. It was the only option— I was too fat for fatphobic surgeons, I wasn’t trans enough for top surgery, I didn’t have enough resources for it to go any other way.

I was wrong.

The first time I saw a fat person sharing a photo of their bare chest, their top surgery scars clearly visible, it was like a whole world opened up that I never knew existed. I will never forget it. Imagining a world without my chest weighing me down. Imagining throwing all of my bras away. It was amazing. Now there was a chance to feel at home in my body, and in my self, in a way I’d never been able to before.

It’s been challenging and upsetting to navigate the overwhelming medical fatphobia everywhere and to see firsthand how difficult accessing care is for trans and non-binary folks of all sizes, and especially fat trans and non-binary folks. But I found a surgeon I trust who doesn’t care that I’m fat, my insurance company recently updated their policies to be less terrible, and I have a surgery date set. I’m so close to something I never dreamt I’d be able to do. 9-year-old me wouldn’t believe it.

I have a very solid insurance plan that will leave me with around $3000 in out of pocket costs. I’m also hopeful that I’ll receive short term disability benefits for the 6-8 weeks I’ll have to take off from my physically demanding customer service job. I’m still very nervous about gathering the remaining resources I need to get across the finish line. The pandemic has lead to my hours being cut, and they just got rid of paid time benefits for hourly employees at work, so I don’t have any savings or work benefits to make this any easier. I need help covering the out-of-pocket surgery costs, travel costs to the other side of the state for surgery and the night after surgery, and my living costs during recovery. I’ve also adjusted the total needed to account for the roughly 3% in fees that GoFundMe collects.

Any amount helps lift the weight. I have some fee-free methods of contribution listed below, and will update this page to reflect those amounts regularly. If monetary help is out of reach right now, boosting this and getting more folks to see it is also incredibly helpful and greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Venmo: @jdr91

Cash App: $jessireed91

PayPal: @jessicareed459